Lillies Come Out in the Sunshine!

No Blog last week, so we have some catching up to do. Less about the garden this week, although there has been plenty of action there, and more about the craziness of life.

It appears this year that the one thing that we can guarantee at the moment is that the weather will be good. The concert we attended a couple of weeks ago had great weather, Wimbledon has had great weather and even the Glastonbury weekend was bereft of the usual mud and wellies.

How different the world feels with everyone in their shorts or summer frocks. The shock election and terrible events in London created enormous bad feelings, but the good weather seems to have chilled people a little after the initial cauldron nearly boiled over. It is a fine line between angst and riots and at one point it looked like London could seriously explode, but in the last week things seem to have boiled up less and reduced to a simmer.

Sitting outside last night for dinner with the sun looking down and a fantastic breeze drifting across the garden, demonstrated just how wonderful the UK summer can be at times. Sadly, this was the first time really this year that we have managed to eat out, but it won’t be the last if I can help it.

The evening warmth has evoked memories of Mediterranean holidays, eating calamari by the sea, doused with copious quantities of Amstel beer, followed by skewered meat and tzatziki or similar. Can’t you just smell the charcoal burner and taste the smoky barbeque tang.

An overwhelming need to book my next holiday has grown inside me as I write. The Scilly Isles were great but they didn’t quite provide the food extravaganza that we usually look for in a holiday.

Haphazard Summer Flowers

Starting a new job recently has seen me travel rather more. A consequence of regular travelling these days is the need to start early to miss the traffic, even on seemingly shorter journeys. No longer does the notion of getting off early mean setting off with a six or seven in the hour, and the regular exploration of the hours beginning with four or five means that by the end of the week tiredness has descended and sleep feels very precious.

With this in mind I have not covered myself in glory recently.

Firstly, we had our big concert to attend in London on a Friday a couple of weeks ago. We took the day off, and arranged to get going early, to give us plenty of time to do something in London ahead of the evening’s entertainment.

We packed up the car and set-off in high spirits listening to our favourite music. Swinging into our local petrol station, I jumped out and started to fill up.

About 2 minutes later I looked at the green pump I was holding in my hand, and then looked up at the diesel car that I had been using it to fill. A feeling of cold desperation rose up my back, into my throat and then dropped down into the pit of my stomach. I had just put £20 of petrol into my diesel motor. “Oh s**t!”.

I rushed over to the mechanic who was to hand, fixing another car. The prognosis was not good. “You need to flush it out before you can drive it”, he exclaimed.

Suddenly, the good weather didn’t seem quite so bright, and the notion of going to London in good time felt rather unlikely. Thankfully, the cool head standing next to me, with a slight snigger, had quickly come up with the answer. “We will go to London in my little Nissan Micra!”.

We got to our concert and back again. Driving on the motorway in a car just big enough for me to squeeze into was not fun, but it did solve a big problem, even if it was of my own making.

Having been married for nearly 30 years, one builds up a mental list between you of the most muppet inspiring things that we have done. I am sure those of you who have been married for any length will understand just what I mean. Between us, my better half has had much greater representation in this list than I over the years, something she won’t dispute. But this latest event has gone a long way to even the score. 

Intense Summer Colour

But just when I thought I had been stupid, I managed to outdo myself even on that score.

Part of travelling regularly has seen the need to fly more often. Getting up at the crack of dawn rushing to the local airport and bundling myself through security to spend a day somewhere relatively remote before repeating the exercise in reverse later on that same evening.

The record for early starts was 2am where the local airport was actually Birmingham which required a two-hour drive before the flight.

Thankfully, I used a taxi to get me there, but I did spend most of the journey watching the driver who was speeding up the motorway with his window wide open, bashing the steering wheel fairly violently trying to keep his eyes open.

The feeling of trying to stay awake whilst driving is a fairly desperate one when tiredness descends, but not nearly as desperate as the feeling of being in the hands of someone else who is falling asleep at the wheel. “I don’t normally work at this hour”, the taxi driver volunteered. I suddenly felt more awake than I had planned to be at that hour.

Going back to last week, I was flying up to Glasgow from London where I had just flown in from Poland at midnight the night before.

As I landed, I played the usual game of getting off the plane as quickly as possible. Everyone rushes to get their bag from the overhead lockers, struggles out into the gangway and descends the stairs heading for the taxis.

As I arrived in the centre of the city, I felt ready for the day with thoughts of the meetings scheduled later. And then a feeling of dread descended.

Where was my case that I had brought from Poland?

I never fly to Glasgow with a case but this time I had not come from home, and the case was still going around the luggage conveyor belt in the airport.

Finding the right number to call someone took me about an hour. I telephoned every number I could find and helpfully everyone told me that they couldn’t do anything. Finally, I called the right person, stumbling across the number on the umpteenth contact us web page I had looked at.

The person on the other end of the phone immediately told me my name. “Don’t worry”, he said, “Everyone does it”. “Everyone does not usually include me”, I thought. But I agreed to pick up the bag when I flew back in the evening.

To cut a long story short, I will now wind the clock forward about 12 hours, as I arrived home from Glasgow in another taxi.

I looked into the back of the cab and the feeling of dread that I had felt earlier was now doubled.

No, I hadn’t forgotten to pick up the case in Glasgow – by a miracle I had remembered that.

Yes, I had checked my case onto the flight and it had travelled back with me correctly.

But yes, I had also forgotten to pick it off the carousel in Bristol. Twice in one day – I had managed to leave it behind!

My newly flushed out car sat beside me on the drive, no petrol to be seen. It had been fixed while I was away. Now was the time to test it!

An airport is a lonely place when you are trying to explain to the night staff that your case is on the other side of the exit. But I now know that you can turn up and ask at any time during the night.

Because they had had issues with a flight they had taken all the cases from the carousel and dumped them in the middle of the departure lounge for anyone to help themselves.

Thankfully my case was still there, one of two left. But anyone could have walked into the terminal, picked it up and taken it home. Note to self – “don’t forget it again”.

The muppet event list is now balanced in my favour J

Even the Bin Manufacturer Has Rumbled Us

A week or so ago, I arrived home one night to find my better half peering into the wood burner. A weird buzzing was coming from inside. A very large hornet had flown down the chimney and was trying to find a way out.

“I need to let it out”, she said, shutting the lounge door in my face while I stood outside with the two cats transfixed by the noise.

Ten minutes later with lots of huffing and puffing coming from behind the closed door, the hornet was finally shepherded out and the buzzing had stopped. We were surprised other things hadn’t come down the chimney more often.

The next day, a tapping on the glass was emanating from the fire once again and a great tit had managed to do the same trick.

What was the chances of that?

Why had this happened now?

There was nothing untoward about the chimney, no changes to the stack or chimney pot, it was just strange coincidence. It is funny how often coincidences like this can happen.

This is My Case - No It's Mine!

In using the airports as often as I do, I keep coming up against a phenomenon that drives me around the bend, the automated flush toilet. This is not constrained to airports, but I am usually carrying lots of bags and fitting into a toilet cubicle is a challenge.

In the interests of hygiene, someone has invented the clever idea of using a motion detector to sense when a user of a toilet has left the seat and requires a flush. Brilliant!

However, they have obviously never been a big, fat, human with lots of bags.

Whilst using one such contraption, I got into an interesting position.

Completing my task, if you know what I mean, I reached down to wipe way the evidence. Sensing my motion, the toilet decided to auto-flush, removing my evidence and at the same time hosing down my undercarriage, drowning the toilet paper I was attempting to use to wipe myself at the same time – which had now become plastered all over my arse.

“Oh f**k”, I exclaimed, feeling horribly damp in places I shouldn’t be.

As I reached for some more toilet paper to dry myself off, the sensor kicked in again, hosing me down for a second time.

I gingerly moved my right arm over to get some more tissue paper whilst not moving my body. Re-armed, I leaned forward to complete the task at hand, only for the motion detector to recognise me for the third time and drown me once again.

“Who needs a bidet?”, I thought. Not that I have ever used one.

I skilfully managed to extricate myself from the cubicle whilst drying myself and not getting hosed down.

Modern technology has presented us with many challenges, but this was my worst.

The Look of Mischief

After all the excitement of lost cases, petrol pumps and free unexpected washes, I arrived home feeling knackered from the week just passed. I dumped my case, showered and clambered into bed. Peace at last.

The sound of a cat leaping around the room after a vole, woke me from a very short sleep. The poor vole had seen better days and now had become the latest play thing. As I staggered out of bed the cat grabbed the carcass and started to consume it slowly. “Oh that is disgusting”, I thought. This happens enough now that I don’t even try to stop it any more. I went back to bed to the sounds of crunching and cracking of bones.

Thirty minutes later, I could hear an explosion from my right. The other cat had just projectile vomited all over the pillow next to me. The pillow not only smelt horrible, but it now had a strange orange hew from the carrots that had been mixed into the cat food. One thing the cat food makers never think about is how easy it will be to get the food off whatever a cat has just thrown up on.

I staggered out of bed once again, to clean the pillow and dump it into the bath.

Sleep had never felt so good!

This Smells Slightly Better

Recently, we have had a strange smell in the kitchen that we couldn’t place, and it wasn’t my better half for a change.

We wandered around sniffing everything, trying to find where it was coming from. Unable to find the source we left the windows open for the night and hoped it would go away. At first this worked, but the next night we returned home to find it had come back. Again, we sniffed and finally decided that something had probably climbed into the roof and died, releasing the aroma through the light fittings and into the kitchen.

Last week we had our kitchen tiles replaced. They had become dangerous and we kept falling over the ridges in the floor. (We are starting to sound like a couple of old codgers, but really they were quite dangerous).

In doing this the workmen found the cause of the smell. A vole had managed to escape the cats only to get trapped under the work surfaces. I remembered back to a previous posting on this blog of a vole that had escaped our clutches and vanished into the lounge, never to be seen again. This was where he had ended up.

Even the Vegetables Are Flowering

The owls are back in the garden. With the windows open to cool the place down, the sound of hooting can be heard from the trees around the house. It is strangely comforting that he is still about. Usually, the summer months are devoid of his calling, but not this year.

We have also seen the snake back in the garden. For some months we had not seen it and we presumed it was dead or moved on. But now twice in two days it has appeared, firstly by the house and then in the pond.

It is beautiful to see the variety of nature surrounding the house and feel that life still moves on for the wildlife irrespective of the modern world.

One Final Unrelated Summer Picture

The Robbie Williams concert was really good. He was supported by Erasure who were also ok. The London Olympic Stadium, now home to West Ham Utd football club is not a good venue for music though. It is ok if you are not high up, but the cables that hold up the lighting obscure your view of the stage and action.  When you have paid over the odds to get in, this is not really good enough.

However, we did see something that was also really good on the same day, and was not view obscured. The Pink Floyd exhibition in the V&A museum. This was much better than I expected and really very good. If you get the chance and are in London, try to go. Enormous models of walking hammers and teachers with telescopic eyes takes you right back to the end of the 70s and the Wall.

How life has changed since then!

This weekend we are heading off to the home of rugby in England, Twickenham. With the Lions in New Zealand, (let’s hope they win the third test), and England in Argentina, while the cat’s away the stadium will be used for other things. This time, a U2 concert supported by Noel Gallagher – now that is an interesting partnership.

With this in mind please find the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmSdTa9kaiQ

The weather is still supposed to be hot, so have a great weekend!

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